EDMONTON - Thomas, Mason, and Luke Low were each born with big, blue eyes that, at first, showed no signs of a cancer rarely seen in children, let alone triplets.

Barely three-months-old, the Edmonton brothers are in Toronto receiving treatment for an illness that threatens their vision before it has even fully formed.

“It’s been a whirlwind, everything’s been happening so fast — finding out that all of the babies had it, to packing up and coming to Toronto. It’s been a blur but it’s also felt like months and months,” said Richard Low, the boys’ father, and a medical resident who completed his studies at the University of Alberta.

Less than three weeks ago, Low noticed the middle triplet, Mason, had a tear-shaped pupil in his left eye. It was a curious finding that he photographed. When he looked at the picture, Mason’s pupil did not appear black or red. Rather, it was white.

He and his wife Leslie would learn the white was one of many tumours on the eye. And all of the boys had them.

The tumours are the result of retinoblastoma, a rare eye cancer that appears about 22 times each year in Canada. The tumours form on the eye when cells are dividing to form the retina, so the cancer affects children whose eyes are developing. Doctors have never heard of such a case in triplets.

“All three of the triplets have identical DNA, and that mutation they carry in that retinoblastoma gene is present in all of them,” said Dr. Brenda Gallie, an ophthalmologist who is part of the boys’ treatment team at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “We don’t know what the mistake in the gene is yet, but we will in a few weeks. “

The specialized exams and treatments the boys need are not available in Alberta, so the family must travel regularly to Toronto for several years as their eyes are monitored and treated.

Each of the boys’ eyes must be treated differently. The doctors graded their eyes, with a score of zero being a healthy eye and a score of D being an eye where the tumour is advanced and has caused blindness.

That was the case with Thomas’ right eye. It was removed in surgery late last week and a prosthetic eye was put in.

“From a practical point of view, taking the eye was the only thing to do. From an emotional point of view as a parent, it was very difficult,” said Low.

The medical case for saving the eye was small. Thomas would have had to have undergone rounds of chemotherapy, carrying significant risks for such a small baby. Most of the vision had already been lost in the eye.

Doctors zap the smaller tumours with lasers or freeze them off. Because the boys’ eyes are developing every day, the tumours will continue to develop too.

The long-term effects of the disease will follow Thomas, Mason, and Luke into adulthood.

“When they grow up and have children of their own, their kids will have a 50 per cent risk of retinoblastoma,” said Gallie. “You can do tests to see if the (unborn) baby has inherited the bad chromosome ... if that’s the case, the baby will be delivered early by four weeks, so you can see the tumour early and start treatment early too.”

Gallie said the good news right now is that Thomas, Mason, and Luke each have one eye with perfect vision.

The boys were born Dec. 5, each weighing less than five pounds. Their growth has been tracked on a family blog, which the Low’s have long-used to update relatives on their lives.

They’ve continued to provide updates through difficult moments, such as Thomas’ surgery, and the most simple moments of infancy, too — there are pictures of the boys doing “tummy time;” there are pictures of their grandma, cradling two boys in her arms; and there are photos of the boys’ bright eyes and even brighter smiles.

The family has the support of both sets of grandparents, siblings, friends and even strangers who have offered everything from bassinets to advice.

“It is tough. I’m still in the middle of my final training and we have a two-year-old at home,” said Low. “But this is something we can’t sit on. We have to take this a day at a time, we’ll take care of it and the sun will still come up tomorrow. Life will go on and we’ll get through this.”

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